Chris Jericho Talks Keeping WWE Return a Secret, New Talent & More

Chris Jericho spoke with WWE.com. Here are some highlights from the interview.

His thoughts on keeping his return a secret: “In this day and age, it’s almost impossible to keep a secret. It was just really, really cool to know that we could still keep a secret and keep a nice surprise. But there was no rumors at all that Jericho was going to come back at the Rumble. If I go to a movie, I don’t want to know what the ending of it is before I go.

“What would people expect if Jericho was coming back? Well, some kind of complicated clues. I thought, “what if there was no clues? I just showed up?” I like being the master of puppets sometimes when it comes to the fans. I think that we kind of really surprised a lot of experts that think they know everything but they really don’t. I think it’s one of the reasons that the reaction was so huge. It’s definitely one of the best nights of my career.

“The hardest part was just waiting for the shoe to drop, and waiting for somebody to find out I was going to be there. I was like so scared, like kind of crawling under the cover of night to get to this little bus where I was hiding, hoping that no one would see me. And that, like some parking attendant going “oh, Jericho’s here.” And when nobody did I was just like this is, this is amazing. I got into the Rumble, and people were chanting, “you still got it.” And like, I never lost it.”

How playing with Fozzy is in comparison to keeping in ring shape: “Whenever Fozzy plays, we put on a very intense show. A lot of energy, a lot of ya know, jumping and running. But when you get into the ring it’s a different story. And It’s funny, because when I heard I was in the Rumble for 47 minutes and 53 seconds, and I was like, “Wow, is it really that long?

“Mr. McMahon even asked me like after he said, “you did a great job, but not working in awhile, I mean how did you stay in ring shape?” And I was like, “I don’t know.” And then Even on Raw, my first single match was like 18 minutes against CM Punk. Same thing. It’s like I guess just when you’ve been doing it long enough it just gets ingrained into your body and it’s just more instinct than anything. ”

On what impresses him about some of the newer WWE wrestlers: “It’s good to know that the new prospects that are coming in have some experience and been around a little bit. And obviously The Shield, I was really impressed by them right off the bat. They were just three guys that were given a shot and really took the ball and ran with it. Cesaro, I’ve been a fan of his even before he came here. They’ve worked around the world and it benefited them when they debuted.”